Drawing

About a month or so back I had an overwhelming inclination to draw a dragon… which I’ve never drawn before, even though I’ve had an interest in all things fantasy for many years… so I purchased a book from an art shop specifically on the subject… just to get some inspiration… and I started the rough pencil sketch you see below…

Well thanks to inspiration from Michaela’s daughter, I have now completed my first dragon sketch…

This is another first in a number of ways for me… The first Dragon, and my first sketch finished with Artline Graphic Pens, and also the first sketch I’ve also gone on to then “colour in” with artists colouring pencils…

Originally I intended it to just be a shaded graphite pencil sketch, but then changed my mind and decided to use graphic pens instead… and lastly, more as a test, I copied it on to standard paper, and coloured that in…

So what’s your preference ???… Coloured or Graphic Pen ???… Here’s the initial sketch too for those who are interested in how it started off… :)

So this is another absolute first for me…. Pastels that is…. I’ve NEVER used pastels before, as I really didn’t think you could get any detail from them, that was until I saw a picture in a local exhibition that blew me away…. And ever since then I’ve been determined to try pastels myself… And here’s my first EVER effort… :)

Please have a look at my ARTWORK page too, for some more examples of my art… All of which (but one) are from the past few months, when I re-discovered my love of art… thanks to an inspirational friend…

This is a sketch of my youngest daughter, from this photo of mine taken last year… And there was me thinking the photo itself was tricky to capture, given my daughters utter disinterest in posing for the camera… But now I know photography is a whole lot easier than drawing… I spent quite some time on this one though, seriously tweaking it numerous times before this incarnation… I completely altered the shading, tweaked the nose, changed the hair completely, added her freckles.. and some more to boot… I think I’m pretty pleased now though, and I think this is the finished article…

I’ve also spent some time today trying my hand at watercolour painting… for the first time ever, as far as I can recall… and it didn’t go too badly.. mefinks… lol… Look out for that some time soon…

Btw… This isn’t necessarily me back.. but for today at least I’m gonna have a mooch around to see what I’ve missed… Consider it a minor relapse… ;)

OH… And thank you all so much for your well wishes on my previous post… They were ALL very much appreciated… :)

Ok, so I know I promised no more drawings after my last sketch proved none too popular, but you’re gonna have to put up with at least one more I’m afraid… Guess who ???…

This is only the second portrait I think I’ve ever sketched, and have to confess to initially not being at all happy with it when I first began sketching… You see, it’s a new sketch pad, and the paper is coarser than I’m used to, and as such I couldn’t adopt my normal sketching style of smooth even shading… To stand any chance I had to “line shade” or whatever it’s called… which is a style of sketching I’m entirely unfamiliar with… The intention was to just use it as a test, and then scrap it… and buy a finer sketch pad…

I have to confess though as I went on, it began to grow on me… and I’m now real pleased with the finished sketch… Hopefully my real good friend and beautiful model likes it too… :)

So finally I’ve managed to sketch a proper portrait… I think… and it’s only taken me… ummm… more than lots of years of trying… lol… It’s the first one at least that doesn’t look as though it’s been sketched by a one legged spider on crack…

Honestly, I gave up trying to draw people back in my early teens, as I never ever could achieve any real likeness to the person I was trying to sketch… I don’t think I’ve achieved that here either if I’m honest… but at least it looks human… so I’m reasonably pleased with it…. It’s a sketch of a very good friend of mine Classic Perfection, (hence the title), and was based on this shot…

I don’t think I will be making portraits my subject of choice though… lol…

Anyway, not sure I should really be showing the workflow of my etchings, but this was quite the challenge for me to do, and I really wasn’t at all happy with the initial draft of it… and ended up tweaking the eyes, nose, mouth.. and.. ummm… the hair too… So it went through a tiny bit of adjusting… lol… Here’s the outline sketch, and the first pass too… before I finally achieved something I was relatively happy with…

After I posted my parrot sketch, I was asked by an old friend if I could sketch her portrait for her… Her words “Draw me pleeeeeeease… I’ll give you a quid if you do”…. Well I’ve never had much success with faces, but there was a quid at stake… so I asked if I could sketch an “alternative” portrait… lol… Sooooo…. Ummmm…. Well what can I say, except here it is…

In my defence though…. errrrrh…. Yeah ok, I guess I have no defence…. lol…. BUT, the results have kinda given me the impetus to try a proper portrait next… Watch this space… Well, not THIS space, as this space is just a butt… :)

Well, I’ve been marvelling in the expansion of MrsA’s artistic talents recently, with her return to brush and canvas after many years absence… and it has inspired me also to pick up a medium long forgotten… Pencil and paper… And this last weekend I sketched me a preening parrot…

Strangely enough though, what I found most difficult about this was actually trying to photograph it for my blog… lol…

I think one of the reasons I lapsed from pencil sketching, and tend to avoid painting, is that I have very little in the way of patience, and am also overly concerned with detail… Believe it or not I started my first ever oil painting some 10 years ago, and never did finish it… lol…

Funky Slug Photo’s on Flickr

For an alternative to the photography I have posted here, please also check out my Flickr website, where I go under the pseudonym of Funky Slug. Here you can preview a much larger selection of my work.